Why did the RTS genre die at the peak of its popularity?Games like Warcraft and Starcraft were incredibly popular and massive culture defining things on thei release and then... nothing else was really made after them to follow up? Despite all their success?What happened?Why did people just decide to stop making those games?
>>745938475Consoles.RTS games were never popular on consoles (because good luck playing an RTS on a controller), so publishers stopped making them. There was no money in it. The same happened with iso RPGs and classic FPS games like Quake.
>>745938475It didn't, it peaked in 2005 and didn't really die until 2010 when wings of liberty failed.It happenned to peak right before the time general enshittification of gaming began. It was just bad luck really. They didn't exactly squander the 2005-2010 period but they tried different things to appeal to the normie market, none of which worked.
>>745938582But rts games existed on consoles for like 2 decades prior too?I mean, these games were super popular on PC, so why not just keep making them for PC?
>>745938475RTSs are special in that for them to be continuously competitively popular they need to stay as static as possible. But companies want to milk their audiences, which means they need to constantly introduce and change things that can be sold as microtransactions.They cant be both, which means that modern profit driven corporations see no point in them.
>>745938648Because nobody would give the devs any money for it. Consoles were a wunderkind back in late 2000's. You are not making a game on a console, it's not worth an investment.
>>745938648>why not just keep making them for PC?Because simpler more reliable games proved more profitable. Blizard made more from one month of overwatch skins than they did from all the sales of starcraft 2 combined.These companies always wanted to make the most money for the least input, in the 1990-2010 era they just didn't know how. We were born in a really lucky era when there was actual incentive for studios to have a variety and try and experiment with things but it was never going to last.
>>745938832Is there an archive out there of all the Samwise artwork?I always loved his warcraft pencil art, but it's impossible to find in non tiny 200x300 deep fried jpg screenshot resaved 1000 times anywhere except like randomly on pinterest.
>>745938475Dora happened. Devs realized they could drastically roll back the assets they needed to develop and balance all while opening the floodgates to cosmetic micro transactions.
>>745938475>What happened?World became brown.Average IQ dropped below the (rather low already) minimum threshold needed to operate RTS vaguely correctly.Same shit as tank controls, really.
>>745938582>because good luck playing an RTS on a controllerI did. WCII, C&C, RA1. Then much later Halo Wars.It's perfectly fine, controllers were never the issue.Console just attract Ball&Gun players, so they aren't interested in RTS to begin with.
>>745938582MOBAs you colossal retard
Acrual historical answer:Dota allstars came out of the map scene and it was over.Dota was warcraft 3 but easier
>>745938648Steam became popular and everyone just stopped making PC only games in favor of making multi platform games which led to death of true PC genres and games.Steam is the worst thing to happen to pc gaming.
>>745940721Some obese console refuge steam drone will probably come here and say how gabe jewell blessing pc with console ports saved pc gayming lol
>>745938475Because no one cares anymore. Its dead on PC too
>>745940507MOBA is NOT RTS
>>745940453You CAN play RTS on a console but it's like playing FPS on a console.Only a gorilla nigger would do it.
>>745938832Total War somewhat cracked the code by making "expansion" DLC that would be viewed as extremely greedy low effort expansion for the price back in 2000
>>745938475I remember some Korean channels trying to push an RTS that had cavemen that then had wood helicopters. Anybody know the name?
>>745941096>but it's like playing FPS on a console>Only a gorilla nigger would do it... yes, that's why FPS are really popular on console. Kinda my point.
>>745938475The faggy esports community killled RTS.
>>745938475EA raped it to death.
Warcraft 3 killed itself and the genre in general by introducing retards to DOTA and therefore getting them addicted to random 5v5 build-based gambling.ASSFAGGOTS is just another vector for gambling retards to waste their life away playing garbage until the end of time.
>>745942939butthurt much?
>>745941285Total War is not competitive, 95% of game time is spent on singleplayer
>blizzslop coomshitnot video games
>>745938475People that want to click with a hero and abilities played mobas and diablo-likes while people that want strategy just play turn based or slow as molasses games
>>745938475I talked about this in last night's warcraft thread but what's really a shame is the lack of an indie scene.Sure publishers don't want it, fuck it they don't want a lot of things, but most of them still get indie releases.On the RTS front though? There's like basically nothing.You got roguelikes outta the wazzoo, side scrollers, platformers, shooters, action games, racing games, cozy games, horror games, movie games, walking simulators, job simulators, management simulators like factorio.But no one really just makes a good single player fantasy RTS game with a solid campaign even for 1 playable race.You'd think someone at least would make a couple but I don't think there are any at all, and I think there's a market for it for sure.Whoever will be the first person to make wc3 style game will corner that niche so hard it will make them giga rich and open the floodgates for more just like it happened with roguelikes with isaac and ps1 low polly horror game walking sims like mouthwashing etc.It's just we have to wait for that one someone to be the first and take the biggest slice of the pie, but people are generally retarded so who knows how long we'll have to wait.
At least RTS had the dignity to take its leave once its time was over unlike fighting games.
>>745944619no they wont, people will just keep playing wc3
>>745944619I don't think WC3 can ever be reiterated, the custom maps were literally the other half of the game, it was so huge and diverse I honestly can't think of WC3 as anything other than the greatest game ever. The base game was amazing and on top of that the custom map scene was extremely deep.
>>745944791They won't what?Of course people will keep playing wc3, people still play silent hill 3, people still play half life 2 despite other horror games and first person shooters existing and being massively popular, I don't see what that has to do with anything.
>>745938475RTS died when PC games became more casual friendly. MOBAs required 1/5th of the APM as an RTS and allowed you to be carried by friends. At the same time zoomers were starting to get into PC gaming as well as women and they were desperate for genres they could actually get a grasp on. Basically the rise of shitters killed it
>>745942967literally impossible to get more butthurt than mobatardsare there gamers who gate gaming more than them? they are literally only playing because of gambling addiction. doing something because you are addicted and hating every second of it and not even getting paid for it must be hell on earth
>>745938475Same reason mmos died.Everybody wanted to be the next starcraft 2 while delivering shit single player campaign.
>>745944858I mean that's true, and that will definitely not be recreated, but I think people are still craving a somewhat new experience of at least the campaign part of it too.Like if we're talking broadly then as fucked up as it is then roblox is the successor to wc3 custom maps in a way, so I guess it was sort of recreated as just a platform of infinite fuckass random custom games.
>>745940507How does a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game like Quake Live threaten RTS?
>>745938475games went from real-time strategy to real-time gookclicking. playing against some fatherless spastic working himself into a stroke isn't fun.
>>745944998There were always sweats and tryhards, since before starcraft even existed as a concept.That didn't change anything for any other competitive game genre, they're all still going, counter strike is still going, mobas are still going, hero shooters are still going, and it's not fun to play against those people in them either, so why is RTS any different?
>>745945068Because there aren't any good new ones coming outNo Warcraft 4, no Starcraft 3
>>745945093Well yeah, I know, that's what I said in the first place.Why aren't any good new ones coming out?
>>745940507No you retard, ASSFAGGOTS got mainstream popular with LoL in 2009 by which time RTS as genre was on life support.As that poster said, RTS declined because publishers pulled funding to focus on Console-first games
Besides consoles, RTS is a genre that turns out most people only like a specific aspect of.Warcraft 3 as not the typical RTS because it includes light RPG elements with the hero mechanic which enabled the evolution of DoTA clonesTotal War is not an RTS because it cuts out real time base building and resource management with a TPS map painter and focused on tactical warfare with what is technically only a handful of unitsSo people who want to command units play RTT like Total War and Wargame and Blitzkrieg and Men of War and so on.People who want to build bases and focus on resources play Anno or even stuff like Factorio.People who want endless hordes have tower defense games.That specific recipe of gather resources -> build base -> make units -> secure exotic resources -> do research -> upgrade -> repeat turns out to appeal to a very small group of people.This isn't even a case of>welm erm RTS players have always been a nicheRTS was one of the top genres during the first PC golden age, the problem is that back then people played what was available to them.Now people can fine tune their preferences and find games that scratch the exact specific itch.There are games that better accommodate rushers, other games that better accommodate turtles, so they flocked to them.And a more superficial thing. RTS live and die by their aesthetic. If the factions look like shit, or if it is set in period a person doesn't care about, they are not going to invest.
>it's le assfaggitz>it's le casuels>it's da e-sportzThings changed dumbasses.No longer was the Gamer™ some nerd sitting in his basement or the rich kid. Now it's any random groid that can hop on the interwebz. This changing demographic manifest not only in the discourse you see, but also in the games that become "popular", for what is popularity but a contest of the lowest common denominator?I initially wanted to make a longer post, but it dawned on me it don't matter. None of this matter.
>>745944858as someone who spent disgusting amounts of time playing custom maps I'd put wc3 in a solid 2nd place but maybe that's because the magic's long goneds3 forever GOATed for pontiff pvp aloneMHFU and gears 1 can share third
>>745945814Why are paradox mappainters, arguably even more nerdy games, not only made but get massive fanfare during release?According to your logic it should be FIFA and COD all the way down but that just isn't true.But you are right that things change and it is very likely that RTS was a product of it's time that got superseded by new market conditions, but it should not be solely chalked up to ball and gun fags because there are enough successful niches that do not cater to the "lowest common denominator".I also think RTS suffers from a similar problem that MMO does with "30 year genre veterans" trying to make "the next big thing" where they had oversold their idea to investors and don't actually understand the genre they are a veteran of.Racing games are another genre that went through massive changes. In 2000s everyone was trying to make the next UG2 and NFS was a juggernaut franchise. Now there hasn't been a new game for 4 years (in the same time span we had UG1, UG2 and MW come out during early 2000s) and there are no plans for new games apparently.What happened? The genre more or less moved towards catering to simfags (hardly can be called lowest common denom) with really only GT and Forza having any pull as flagship franchises and even then both are struggling.So yea times change there are a lot of moving parts that contribute to this.A cringe side note but it is a weird feeling to realize that me talking about games from 2000s now is basically the same as someone talking about games from 1980s in 2006, it just doesn't feel like comparable but it is what it is. Maybe it is a sign of stagnation as a result of hitting various diminishing returns by late 2000s
>>745938475RTS still maintains the same number of players as it did in the 2000's, 1 billion ball and gun normalfags started gaming and drowned them out.
>>745946448RTS used to be considered a staple genre and given the same amount of focus and importance by the gaming media as everything else, top lists, cover features, awards etc, now it's seen as a niche genre for autists like grand strategy once was
What I really want is just wc3 campaign but big.Like just how the missions there were>you have a map>you build your buildings and gather resources>you make troops and heroes>you send them out to explore and find either story shit or optional quests>like oh you discovered a murloc camp guarding a treasure chest that cointains like ring of +2 strength of mana potion>you kill them gain exp>level up>explore more find enemy army>duke it out>build more buildings recruit more dudesetc. etc.Like that's just really what I want.There was a weird russian remake of King's Bounty that was basically that, one fuckhuge map with a ton of points of interest, resources, quests, challenges, recruitment centers, places to explore, dungeons to go down in, bosses to fight, kingdoms to conquer, abilities and armors to upgrade and put on your hero unit.BUTit was turn basedjust make that but wc3 style gameplay WITH a good aestheticAnd boom, that's a perfect game for me
>>745944619RTS are difficult to make.
>>745944619There is a HUUUGE community of people making custom campaings and coop singleplayer maps in Warcraft 3 and it's basically endless content at this pointWhy would you make a new game when warcraft 3 already provides smooth controls, network stuff, nice graphics (you can import any asset) and the World Editor is very easy to work with.Indie ARTS is basically baked into Warcraft 3 at this point.
>>745946980I mean they are but not THAT much more difficult to make than some other genres, if someone can make a 3d action or shooter game alone they can definitely make an RTS.
>>745938475WoWWC3 lost 90% of its fanbase to it and SC wasn't that big to begin with outside of korea
>>745946847The appeal of the Warcraft 3 campaign to me was the mission variety, sure the base building maps were great too, but I loved how some were mini RPGs, some where races against time, some were hold out defense maps etc
>>745946980They are difficult to balance.Most any RTS comes with a mapmaker so making maps is in some ways trivial, in others difficult to make something enjoyable.Making factions is also not hard.There is a lesser known RTS by the name of Star Trek Armada 2. Despite being somewhat obscure it had a pretty active modding scene around 2010s.Everything was stored in textfiles, so it was relatively easy to add complete new factions or new units to existing factions.The problem was of course that cool, more ships and shit, but they didn't really do anything for the gameplay.You could ofcourse tweak it down so that it all clicks together right, but who are you going to play against?The AI also worked by having a buildorder written down into a textfile, hardly the dynamic opponent to enjoy a challenge against
>>745947039Yeah but no one makes like wc3 style campaigns... I don't think?I could be wrong, like big grand stories with tons of missions, voice acting, cutscenes.People just make like tower defense and roguelike single map type thing, just pop in and mindlessly click for a few hours, which is fun don't get me wrong it's why I played sleepless nights of footman frenzy with friends in school.But I want a grand adventure with new factions and heroes, new maps to explore, new story to learn, new enemies to defeat.>>745947123Fair, I do personally love the core stuff the most, but I mean you can still have all that too, the way that king's bounty game did it was plot progression was day based I think? Like upon reaching certain areas I think you'd get a cutscene and regroup and get a new objective to do, like to chase some escaping enemy hero before he flees or do a mini RPG or hold out an assault etc., so you can still have all that for sure.
>>745938475Ironically because of the popularity of Starcraft's multiplayer mode.
Blizzard considered WC3 and WC in general as a phaseThey really wanted a WC RPG aka WoWThey soured on RTS after modders created DoTA and Blizzard could not monetize it themselvesGooks are happy to replay BW and SC2 ad infinitum
>>745938475neither of the shitcrafts were never good, blizzard cultistpeople only got warcraft 3 to fuck around in custom mapsstarcraft was a dogshit primitive RTS that required you to do 5000 actions a second because the engine can't even support selecting more than 10 or so units at a time. the second one was a disaster in every wayboth are raped and gaped by superior RTS games like age of empires, which is popular enough to still get constant tournaments to this day.
>>745947342i like to play both age of empires and warcraftso more for me, eat shit tribe fag
>>745938475Games have developed into semi-jobs for an ageing playerbase who have little else in their lives that rewards them. Games now demand more attention and time as they simulate achievement and "progress". Short format genres like RTS will therefore lose out, as the single player always ends and the multiplayer games don't last very long.
>>745938475PC gaming became a nightmare of bpeople opening retail boxes and stealing the CD keys age became a headache for stores so they stopped selling them and piracy took over as the dominant form of PC gaming. Publishers stopped wanting to publish PC exclusive games. It would take a few more years before Steam became popular enough that PC gaming would make it's comeback but the damage was already done to the RTS genre
>>745947512My guy, multiplayer games are literally more popular and more profitable than any single player game ever.
>>745947525Why just the RTS genre?Tons of other PC game genres that were even more niche still survive, people still make fucking point and click adventure games.
>>745938475You could feel RTS dying in real time with Wings of Liberty. There's a million reasons people think they died, but personally I think the rise of mobas (which require tremendously lower micromanagement) attracted the more casual crowd and did them in.
>>745947585Point and click changed demographics. It's an extremely popular genre dominated by middle aged women with computers. It's an oddity honestly.
>>745947693I know but there is definitely not more middle aged women playing point and click games than there are people who want warcraft 4.
>>745947758One only takes a month to make. Also StarCraft 2 taught blizzard that it's not worth it to make RTS since the first ever store mount in WoW made more money.
>>745947057Notably, we do not have a lot of 3d action or shooter games made by one person coming out, and I would say RTS are significantly more complex than them. Just on the mechanical level you have many more interactions on a bigger scale, and then you need a good story, characters and presentation if you're focusing on a single-player. It's a lot to do for one person, and the genre was never so popular you can except one wealthy enough autist to commit to it.
>>745947818I mean that's circular logic, there are plenty more endeavors that make more money.Blizzard could go into crude oil development or banking and be like "yo we made more money in one month than in our entire careers making any other videogames, let's just do that instead!"Like that makes no sense, there are plenty of more profitable games and genres but other less profitable ones, MUCH less profitable ones still exist and prosper in AA and indie scene.
>>745947827>we do not have a lot of 3d action or shooter games made by one person coming outThere are more and more every year, just recently I think 2 people released their own bioshock style game.>Just on the mechanical level you have many more interactions on a bigger scaleI don't know how true this is, sure it's complex but so are many parts of videogames in general, managing something like this can't be infinitely more complex than managing everything else in a game engine already.>and then you need a good story, characters and presentation if you're focusing on a single-playerI mean yeah?That's like built-in, that comes pre-loaded with the notion of making a single player game, and most good indie games manage that.I'm not just saying it's a one person job, it can be 2, 10, 20, 100.There are plenty of indie studios with more than 1 person releasing a lot of low budget games just for the love of the game and on passion alone or crowdfunded, hell you can definitely cobble together a team of 20 RTS nerd and crowdfund the next warcraft 4 with no problem.Have you seen kickstarter?Fuckass random board games no one's ever heard of before or will ever actually take out of the box and play get like 5 million dollars in funding in 24 hours daily there, the bar for effort on entry is so low, unless every project there is fake somehow it's baffling no one at least tried with RTS.
>>745941409Primitive Wars
>>745946406>Why are paradox mappainters, arguably even more nerdy games, not only made but get massive fanfare during release?I think you're massively overestimating their impact.
>>745938475>What happened?WC3 and its custom map ecology made people realize RTS games suck and all they did all day was play washed down, streamlined versions of RTS games, like ASSFAGGOTS.So once again Blizzard is responsible for killing off a genre, many such cases.
Similar to "why don't zoomers like alcohol anymore" there's a bunch of things the happened all at once:>Multiplatform business focus, and RTS doesn't work well on consoles. >DOTA had more mass appeal. >Metagaming became more accessible so half the players outright slaughter the non meta, and the metas are playing the "who had the best APM" rhythm game. >Online focus took away from fun single player campaigns which were beloved.All this came at the exact same time, so the genre was honked.
>>745947546Because of people collecting hats.
>>745938475Because it was around the time when suits started interfering with the creative process and devs lost most of their decision power, which is why over time quality of games only kept declining. No more experimenting, no more innovation. When the Nvidia lobby started kicking in, the suits created marketing campaign that encouraged maximizing graphics despite diminishing returns while deadlines prevented any kind of optimization. Gaming fell off so badly that we are now in a phase that most game set to release next year are just remasters and remakes and the only other games people look forward to are sequels, prequels, spin-offs and [something]-likes that are mostly copy-paste of existing concepts. No one seems to do any experiments anymore, it's all just about "playing it safe". Sooner or later large game companies will try to sneak in AI into game development and the moment just one of them ends up a success despite the audience knowing that AI was used, all floodgates will open... we'll have to see what the result of that is going to be...
>>745944893you fucking suck jeetda
>>745951000
>>745938475ok, so, give me some rope here...what I am going to tell you might seem unbelievable....the RTS genre...NEVER DIED...its actually still popular....just not in USAIDS. I know right, pretty wild huh?
>>745951248Name 10 new big popular RTS games that came out in the last 10 years.
>>745938475It's not dead.RTS games are being made to this day and there is a big audience for this.Problem is that the large corpos rarely take risks with those and they can't monetize the genre in a way they'd want to.
RTS can work on consoles the developers just have to go out of their way to let players know that you can easily plug in a mouse and keyboard and play it properly. My normie friends do it with Age of Mythology. Sony should release an "official" mouse and keyboard option as well so retards will see it and clap like deals and realize that more games can be played that way.Note: mouse and keyboard is only better for RTS games, controller is superior in every other regard
>>745953002>RTS games are being made to this day Such as?
>>745948996Danke
>>745953053Nintendo switch 2 has made their controller be usable as a mouse.But I mean, I feel like RTS can work on a controller too.I played through all of grimgrimoire on ps2 with a controller and it was fine, granted it's not as complex as wc3 but complexity doesn't make the RTS, it is still and RTS at the end of the day.
>>745953062Sanctuary: Shattered Sun, Dorf RTS, Dusk Front, Liquidation, ZeroSpace, Moduwar, Dying Breed, Era One, IMMORTALS: Gates of Pyre, Masada...most of these are currently in early access but are shaping to be good.
>>745953227>all sci fi or modern warman...i just want a wc3 successor
>>745938475One, consoles. Two, playing RTS well requires a very rounded skillset that completely fucks you if you're bad at any one aspect, while the next most similar games don't. Three, most RTS have shit UI where you're paying more attention to the minimap than what's on screen.
>>745944619I think it has to do with the workflow of gamedev. Modern engines provide you with fairly complete presets of scripts and mechanics that even a complete amateur can cobble together to have a working game, all that's left is to add assets. And while stuff like platformers and first person games follow more or less same core principles, RTS is a bit out of the field there, so it might require some advanced programming knowledge to get working. I believe most indie devs nowadays are not that familiar with actual programming, and mostly rely on existing resources to piece together their projects, and RTS must be one of the most technically complex genres out there so they require good understanding of the program structure.Check out this thing https://tokyohuskarl.itch.io/dis-legacy It's an RTS done in RPGMaker by some jap madlad, and it works pretty well all things considered.
>>745956760Sometimes RTS matches last longer than an hour and you have to lock in the entire time. Not many people are willing to do that especially compared to a round of CS or something
>>745938475>>745938626it peaked in 2010-2012, starcraft 2 was incredibly popular, until stagnation of the meta set in and everyone was deathballing, with protoss using motherhsip vaccum and archons and zerg stalling until they have 50 brofestors and 50 broodlords. Also Blizzard decided to let Koreans register as foreign competitors and that combined with Blizzard taking control over every single tournament means it killed western SC2 at the grassroots level.Around 2012 is also when LoL and Dota 2 started taking off, and the rest is history. No one wants to play a game that makes you break out in a cold sweat and requires you to practice and memorize a flowchart of builds.
>>745957639>No one wants to play a game that makes you break out in a cold sweat and requires you to practice and memorize a flowchart of builds.playing wc3 in 2002 didn't do that, it was comfy afalso that was definitely when it peaked
>>745947272>People just make like tower defense and roguelike single map type thing,Do you realize that Warcraft 3 has a fully built in and supported custom campaign system?When they released Reforged it was one of the main missing featurea that people begged them to put it back in.If you search Warcraft 3 custom campaign on youtube you find hundreds of playlists of questlines where people play throgh them and you can also find the on HiveWorkshop
>>745957903I said I could be wrong, but I didn't know that.The only one I know of is that one that came out same year as the game released like warhazard or something.I don't think I've heard of a single other fully fledged custom campaign for wc3 before.Are there any good ones?
>>745944619>But no one really just makes a good single player fantasy RTS game with a solid campaign even for 1 playable race.GodswornSpellforce 3Space Tales --oops sorry, not fantasyand I'm sure there are a bunch more like Dinolords and non-fantasy RTS games
>>745957639>Killed western sc2>When championship held by a certain zerg from finland
>>745958054idk there is a lot, have a look yourself herehttps://www.hiveworkshop.com/repositories/maps.564/?tags[31]=i&order=rating&direction=descPeople say Curse of the forsaken, and Rise of the blood elves, and Exodus - The Violet Gat are good.
>>745958208>dinolordsWhat's up with people recommending games that aren't out yet???It's not out and it's not in early access, how do you know it's good?Bwuh??Anyway, the other two are meh, Spellforce 3 IS good and is the closest thing but despite that still nowhere near close to warcraft 3, it's very much its own unique thing, it also has slow motion and full on stops when you select abilities from the wheel in combat so it feels and plays a lot more like a pillars of eternity type crpg a lot of the times.
>>745958435>>745958054btw if you download these, they are not maps, these are bundles. You put them in the campaign folder and you start it from the custom campaign menu C:\Users\<YourUsername>\Documents\Warcraft III\Campaign
>>745958435Cheers anon, I'll check em out.>>745958676Oh, okay.
>>745958527>It's not out and it's not in early access, how do you know it's good?There was a beta. It was alright
>>745957408RTS ignoring the flow of gameplay doesn't help, no. You're supposed to have lulls in what you do.
>>745941053Same player base. RTS was for people who want shorter lobby games of maybe half hour to an hour they can play with friends. I love RTS but other genres are just better for most people, so the it died out. That and nothing better than Brood War was ever made.
>>745958208>an opportunity to shillCataclismo just got some neat DLC that expands the campaign'n'stuff.Top comf siege/holdout-game.
>>745958774I didn't like BW when it was fresh.
>>745938475Mobas like lol and dota killed it
>>745958836>Cataclismo just got some neat DLC that expands the campaign'n'stuff.>open steam page>recent reviews: mixed
